Increasing View Distance
3 January 1997

The first thing that really got on my nerves when I ventured into the wonderful world of Tamriel, was the limited view. I figured I had to fix that particular "bug". In the file savetree.dat, Daggerfall stores the sound/music/detail settings as vars. Now, the program itself does not allow you to enlarge the red bar beyond the limits of clicking-area, but a simple hex-editor does, if you only manage to locate the vars. As the size differs slightly from time to time, one cannot use the same offset for every savefile. To find the vars, just max the bars, save, let your hex-editor search the savetree.dat for these hex-values 7F,7F,00,7F,00 (the first byte being the detail, you may have to search for 7E's instead), and change the detail to FF!!!! When you load your game, you'll notice that your range has been doubled making everything look much better! (Not as good as unlimited range, but beats the hell out of the first one )

Original Text Written by Thor-Eirik Larsen - irenee@online.no


View Distance Information
26 October 1997

I first hacked to 0xFF, the max viewing distance and ran everywhere (dungeons, outlands, towns...) to observe the effects:

* I didn't have new crashes though I did a dungeon quest, some fight and riding in the wild from one town to another, and some search in towns, asking peoples and pointing houses.
* I enjoyed the enhanced distance. Though the display doesn't get more precise for that (it's not Christmas yet), viewing further fits well to DAGGERFALL freedom feeling.
* The game didn't slow down (on 250 MMX) though displayed and interactive objets have doubled at max distance (42/29 ^2 = 2.1 - it increase with distance Power 2). It seems that PCs are powerfull enough now to handle the double of objects.
* The player sees every creatures further and enemies run towards the player from further distance too. This give more delay to shoot arrows and magic spells at them
* Inside towns, the info mode points further...
* THE PROBLEM: Now the Objects Appear Immediately, poping out of the far myst without smoothness unlike before. In fact many things shows that the game decision distance match 0xFF. The outlands random chaos point for example, regenerate differently when you walk more than the 0xFF distance from that point (42 stride noises). Bethesda limited the view distance to 0x7F and used the 0x7F-0xFF range to make objects appear progressively in the mist for all possible cases. The most mist-range consuming case happens first, patched only to 0xCF: when arriving from outlands onto the border of a big town like Daggerfall town, the chaotic ground in front of the player morphs suddenly into a flat ground with city walls popping up without soft transition anymore. Before patching, they appeared softly across the mist. Then, patching more and more, in a second time around OxDF, trees in outlands pop up the same, then in a third time at 0xFF, houses in towns and everything pop up roughly.
* The ingame distance isn't linear with the patched values. So that it is not so usefull to patch at the max 0xFF value. Here are some critical values I searched for:

Patch
Hex Dist
Strides (m) View
Gain Notes
0x7F 29 (50m) 0% Bethesda's max choice, smooth everywere
0x9F 33 (57m) 14% smooth limit on big towns borders
0xCF 39 (67m) 34% rough on big towns borders, smooth limit in outlands
0xD7 40 (69m) 38% a little rough in outlands, smooth in towns
0xDF 41 (71m) 41% rough in outlands, smooth limit in towns
0xEF 42 (72m) 45% rough in towns at view sides, smooth at center
0xFF 42 (72m) 45% max value, rough nearly everywhere.

I don't care much of the first symptom (big towns poping up at once when arriving from outland) so I hacked definitly with 0xCF value. I "only" gained 34% increased view to keep enough trees smoothness to avoid a quickly bothering sight as I sometimes join sites manually accross the wild. Those who don't care outlands may patch up to 0xDF to gain an extra +7% view whith still a good town sight...

* How I obtained these distances? I counted the stride noises while walking from the first detected pixels of an objects in the far mist till be in contact with it.
* my prefered test object was Castle Sentinel (Grand!). I used the tree rows all around as check scales to avoid any distance mistake.
* I saw the max view was obtained in full daylight at least from 10am to 4pm, under sunny, cloudy, and rainy wheather the same (the usual rainy days without fog). Distance measures showed the same values.
* I wanted to convert sound strides in meters for a better comparison with real world. I managed to obtain a significant approximation with the help of whatever tree row leading to Castle Sentinel. Walking through the trees following the row, I counted repeatedly 5 sound strides between every two trees with still good match on the 5th tree I passed through. So the distance between two trees worth 5 strides Then I stood in front of two trees, viewing them both at extreme right and left of my center view. Then I waited that a NPC cross the line between these trees and I freezed the screen at that moment with the "U" key (use magic object). So I had time to measure on screen the hight of the NPC and the lengh between the two trees: a 5.23 ratio.

Then I had to estimate what was the hight of the NPC and all would be done. NPCs are strong but don't seem tall, the same as middle-age people. The player have to look down at them. I estimated they were exactly 1.65m tall just to have a simple reference number for the max detail distance choosed by Bethesda (0x7F) before patch.

Now the formula: 1.65m x 5.23 = 5 strides
so 1 stride = 1.65 x 34/6.5/5 = 1.72m
so max view Bethesda ref: 29 strides x 1.72m = 50m
and the distance between two trees: 5 strides x 1.72m = 8.6 m
I found it could match my subjective impression for the 2 trees view.
* I noticed a distortion: the lateral 45? objects in the screen view are shown much nearer than the center objects. Having one Castle Sentinel tower hiding in the mist at center of the screen, turning 45? and the tower get strongly out of the mist lateraly: seems that the game takes a square map area and displays it around the player as a circle.
* Once a real scale established, it's possible to measure everything: The Sentinel East townwall inside has #strides: 247 (425m)
* I used it as a new ref to measure diferent player's speeds. walking, it took me 2'16" so walk speed is 11 km/h. It would change with character and load I think... running, it took me 1'30" so run speed is 17 km/h (may change too) at horse full speed, it took me 54", so horse full speed = 28 km/h

Why not the size of the whole worldmap now? In "Totambu" state, riding from "The Screaming Giant Inn" strait south to "The Rheste Plantation" took me 1h27' with rest halts excluded, mouse locked at 28km/h full speed, so it shows a 40.6km distance. According to the on-screen map measures ratio, the whole world map would be about 314km x 530 km. Maybe there are other means to fix a better scale. I didn't looked after them. Mine only rely upon the estimation of NPCs' height.

Original Text Written by Danibene - danibene@mail.dotcom.fr

1) When using the recall/ teleport spell, make sure you put the anchor point outside; not in any buildings, dungeons, etc since stores and such are only open at certain hours of the day.
2) By all means use fast travel when going from marker to marker on the world map. Daggerfall IS THE game that Bethesda said they actually tested and it takes about 2 full weaks (actual time) to get across Tamriel, just by running/ walking.

Thats one thing I wondered, is there any reason not to fast travel? Is there encounters with monsters outside of towns without resting? Because I havent seen a soul besides the usual crowd of people that congregate outside towns.

Thats one thing I wondered, is there any reason not to fast travel?

There a very slim chance of encountering a Witch Coven in the wilderness, if I am not mistaken. Same goes with dungeons.

Also if you want make the history you are making fit the lore in Morrowind, do not choose to give something special to any lords or kings ( except the orc king ) You will understand what I mean as you get through the storyline.

Quick question, I'm having a rather nasty bug that I can't seem to get rid of. My character just sold a whole bunch of goodies from his wagon to a pawn shop. Unfortunately, he apparently has less gold than it says he has. When I try to drop gold, it says I only have 268, but on my character sheet, it says I have over 25000. Also, the weight of the phantom gold seems to be affecting my character, but I can't access it!

Any ideas on how to fix this?

I think I'm (Nord Barbarian) in some kind of dead end now. I'm in my first dungeon on a quest and got The Plague, the worst desease there seems to be. of course I did not think of buying some cure desease potion when in town and of course I did not find any kind of potion so far. travelling back to anywhere means dying. I'm screwed, right?!

~/dosbox.conf (~ = the home folder, ex /home/matilda)
If you are not sure, type in this in dosbox: " CONFIG -writeconf dosbox.conf" which will create dosbox.conf in your home folder.

Edit: its very importent to mess around enogh in the config, and using ctrl+F12 to find the best speed to run the game in.

Are you supposed to get a journal update after you complete objectives?
Got a fighters guild quest where I was supposed to kill a grizzly in someones house.
Well I found a house with a grizzly.(not sure if it's the right one,But how many house grizzly's can their be?)
I killed it but im not sure if I got the right house,and theirs no update.
Can I just go back to the quest giver?
Also when am I supposed to get that letter?

Still, you should scour the armor shops for certain pieces that are hard to find. Like for me, I almost never find good gauntlets except at stores. The Odd Blades in Daggerfall often has a better weapon than the one you have. Most importantly I think for a new player is to spend your money on the good enchanted items at the Mage's Guild. They get daedric stuff in there before you could normally find it, and it will be enchanted with something cool. Once you reach the rank to buy stuff from the guild that way, just town hop to find what you need.

Or save up a crapload of money and summon the daedra lords.

Get some fame, do some jobs. They don't know who you are yet. They'll call you when you're wanted.

If you're feeling hardy, join a knightly order and go giant killing. Or orc slaughtering. Either one tends to turn up good loot.

You'll probably have to travel on foot/horseback through the wilderness (as opposed to using fast travel) in order to get anywhere before the disease takes its toll on you. All I can suggest is leaving the dungeon, calling up the travel map, looking for the nearest temple (or large city with a temple), and riding hard and fast. The Eight be with you!